6 minute read
BUSINESS: BEAUTY CONSULTING AGENCY
Triple The Knowledge
What happens when three industry professionals join forces? We find out as we chat to the founders of Beauty Consulting Agency.
Please briefly tell me about your backgrounds and how the 3 of you met/know each other?
Sanja Maria and Lacey Lopez met at a beauty industry Christmas party about five years ago and immediately hit it off. As their friendship blossomed, so did Sanja’s clinic – Face by SM, which was established in a suite and quickly grew demand, allowing Sanja to relocate to its current Paddington location and expand her offerings from not only injectables but to skin as well. This move allowed Lacey to join Face by SM as a Lead Trainer and Advanced Dermal Therapist for the clinic.
Specialising in the art of non-surgical facial rejuvenation with over 15 years’ experience, Sanja brings a deep understanding of facial anatomy to her work at Face by SM. Lacey has been in the beauty industry for over 10 years and has been identified as an emerging talent due to her meticulous attention to detail as well as offering a uniquely holistic and personalised approach to beauty and wellness.
The trio was cemented when Elly Novosel joined to work alongside Sanja and Lacey with Marketing and PR for the clinic through her agency Milk and ButterMedia. With over 10 years’ experience spanning across traditional and digital marketing, Elly provides her expertise through thorough marketing strategies tailored to one’s business objectives to ensure results are delivered.
When and why did the idea for Beauty Consulting Agency come about?
Beauty Consulting Agency came about in November 2021 during lockdown. With the clinic being closed for a couple months, Lacey had been doing some contracting work for a clinic overseas to help them set up.
Left to right: Lacey Lopez, Sanja Maria, and Elly Novosel
She quickly realised the clinic she was helping needed the expertise of not only her skillset, but also a Registered Nurse who is an experienced cosmetic injector, as well as the help of someone who has knowledge and experience to launch a marketing plan across social media platforms. Instantly Lacey thought, ‘I need Sanja and Elly!’. So over a Margarita or two, we all said “Yes, let’s do it!” and had the Beauty Consulting Agency up and running by February 2022.
What exactly do you offer clients and who is the target market?
As no two beauty businesses are the same, we offer tailored packages to ensure we cover everything you need to effectively implement our advice and directions in the areas to meet your specific goals. With the beauty industry being quite a saturated market, we want to work with start-ups and established clinics so they can build strong relationships with their clients, effectively attract their target audience, refine or implement company policies and procedures, and we connect owners with key industry professionals. Our services are suitable for:
• Businesses which require staff/business owner training. Lacey, Sanja and Elly can be booked virtually or in-clinic to help train staff or yourself across our respective fields.
• Anyone who wants to start their entrepreneur journey by setting up a brand new beauty business solo or with a team
• Established business owners who are feeling a bit stagnant and would like advice and guidance on internal and external systems such as staff training and marketing direction
• Graduates who are looking for guidance to start their career as a cosmetic injector, beauty therapist and within the beauty/hair/wellness industry in general
What kind of challenges does a small business owner face and how do you help? Small business owners are faced with various ongoing challenges, such as:
• Experienced/qualified staffing
• On-going training with the rapidly evolving beauty trends and technology
• Policies and procedures
• Creating relationships with trusted key industry professionals
• External factors such as competitors
• Creating consistent brand awareness
• Engaging with target audience
Beauty Consulting Agency assists business owners with guidance on how to overcome such challenges. We provide insight across every step of starting-up a beauty/hair/wellness business in such a saturated market and we cover areas that established business owners need a boost with in order to evolve and “level-up” within the industry.
You run your own beauty businesses as well, isn’t there a conflict of interest if you help your ‘competition’?
Absolutely not, otherwise we wouldn’t have opted to do this. We all get such joy being able to see others within the industry succeed and we feel satisfaction from helping others achieve their goals and dreams.
As not one beauty/hair/wellness business is the same, they also can’t offer or be great at every single beauty treatment that is out on the market. This is why even prior to launching BCA and still today, we recommend our Face by SM clients to other clinics we liaise with to get certain treatments done that we may not offer and clients really respect and appreciate this.
This is a natural progression for us to expand and be able to have people access our skills and knowledge on a broader spectrum. Having the ability to work with clients all over the world we get to see the level of what other people and places are working at, in turn we get to train and establish a certain calibre to our clients when working with them.
What are your plans for BCA for the near future?
We have mapped out a staggered release plan for BCA. With our bespoke-to-you consulting services launched, we are now in the process of finalising our online learning portal which will be launched across our social media page @beautyconsultingagency.
Once the BCA online portal is live, there are a few more plans in the pipeline which we can’t wait to share with you. Sanja Maria, Lacey Lopez, and Elly Novosel are the founders of Beauty Consulting Agency.
beautyconsultingagency.com
